5-15/12/11 Holidays at El Chalten...

After many days of hard "cycling work" we decide that we need a pause to recover physical and mental energy before starting the Carretera Austral: thenext part of our bike tour.

For our "holidays in the holidays" we decide to stay in El Chalten the youngest village of Patagonia (it was founded only in 1985 to fix permanently the boundary with Chile). 

Here leave year round no more than 500 inhabitants and the double in summer season. Many of them are wild alpinists who fall in love of the incredible mountains just behind the village. And much of  the other pople are kind of modern hippy who decide that a place where you can work only 6 months per year and the remaining 6 months living in peace with people and nature it's a place where is worth to stay...

Welcom to the dream lifestyle village of El Chalten!

So we rapidly adapt at the local life-style and we spend part of our holidays meeting new people, descovering the different  restaurants and bars (rlocal-made beers, pastries and gelato are great!) and the other part doing hikes to discover the National Park of Los Glaciares.

We should say that we where really lucky with the weather because the days that we rest in the village the weather was not so good, but all the day that we did a tour the sun was shining over our heads!

Hiking toward the foot of the Fitz Roy

Visiting the valley of Cerro Torre

The last four days of our holiday we did a trek to have a look to the biggest continental glacier after Antartica: the Campo de Hielo Sur!

The first day of the trek we did a "variante alpina" passing, instead of through the "boring" boggy valley, from the pick of a very panoramic mountain where we could see at the same time ices and deserts!

Looking toward the ice side...

...and toward the desert!

The second day offer us few interesting experiences...

First, we had the chance of testing the our mental strength by crossing bare foot a loog whom water was just coming out from the glacier...If you want to understand the expression of Lum you can make this experiment: try to cool down at 2° the water of your bath, put some pubbles on its floor and walk back and forth in it with the water till to the knees  for 1-2 minutes...

The fastest and more painful "bollita" of my life...

Then, after some climb on the side of the above mentioned glacier we had to walk one hour on it without crampons...

Walking on the glaciers as on paved street...

But finally our effort were rewarded when we arrived at the Paso del Viento (strangely without  wind...) and we could see it...

Views from the Paso del Viento toward the immense Hielo Sur and frozen picks "floating" in the middle of the ice...

And also by the lovely camp place where we spend the afternnong and the night.

Reading afternoon at the camp site...

The day after we continue along a branch of the immense glacier  till to the point where we pass the Colle Huemul

At Paso Huemul there are no more traces...where we go now?

and we had the "chance" to loose the path and finish in a narrow asteep gorge from which we had a marvellous aereal view of the front of the glacier jumping into the lake Viedma....

Wrong way...but unique view!

After a bit of struggling we found back the right way and decended till to the peninsula.

Steep, very steep path going straight down to the lake...

There we put our last camp site in a lovely position just at the border of beach.

Perfect sunset to finish the day...

For the next morning we put the alarm clock at 5.00 AM hoping in a nice sunrise...and we had lack!

...and perfect sunrise to start the new one!

Our breakfast was illuminated by a warm light giving us a peaceful and optimistic welcome in the new day...

Having breakfast in the rising sun light. Just grateful and silent in the beautiness of this moment.

Hiking through pasture without any trail, using only the map, compass and orientation we reach the last summint of our tour and say "goodbye" to immense glacier that accompany us during the last days...

Good bye beautiful glacier!

We are coming back to the starting point and we find back the old but always impressive panorama on the Fitz and Torre picks.

Closing the circle!

We have just to face, again, and old friend to deserve the arrival...the river which we crossed at its source two days ago is waiting for us at its "foce" for a second "guado"...

Indiana Jones was nothing compare to us!

This time the river is much larger, deeper and the stream stronger, but the day is very hot, the water is not so cold and, as we are almost arrived , we can keep our shoes. So after some reserach of the best crossing section we manage to overcome our last challenge! And deserve the arrival beer at El Chalten!

Cheers! Santé! Salute! Prost! Salud!